Moisture and Moss

May 25, 2015November 26, 2018

Moss means moisture, which can sometimes help with direction. The moss on this tree is growing on the north side, but it takes a surprising amount of practice to be able to use moss confidently to navigate.

To get a better feel for the relationship between water, moss and direction, wait a few hours after rain, until you can see a mix of wet and dry areas and then look around to see how the moist areas and moss colonies coincide. Now see how these relate to direction.

This is the best time to learn about moss as it is easy to see which areas retain moisture and which don’t. It’s much harder to get a feel for moss’ preferred habitat when it’s been dry for a long time, or just after heavy rain when everything is wet.